


thou makest a nile in the underworld

by earnshaws



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Archaeology, Curses, Egyptology, M/M, Period-Inaccurate Knowledge of Astronomy, capitalizing on the inadvertent archaeological joke that is the dream-quest of unknown kadath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 22:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16606607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earnshaws/pseuds/earnshaws
Summary: Randolph had never known quite how to feel about his uncle. You wouldn’t think it from the way he comported himself— Howard Carter’s nephew, following in his eminent footsteps, even if he did hail from the New England branch of the family. He always made sure to be perfectly effusive about his uncle in public, especially in Egyptological circles. Without his name, he wouldn’t have a doctorate, or an expedition to call his own— due not to lack of skill or discipline, but the fact that he was the son of a Brahmin family with a reputation to uphold, and members of the Boston aristocracy did not send their scions to university to study something asuselessas Egyptology.(Or, the one where Howard Carter's reckless young nephew strikes out on his own, and gets more than he bargained for.)





	thou makest a nile in the underworld

1924

THEBES

WEST BANK

The thing they don’t tell you about Thebes is not that it’s hot, but that it’s hot _all the time_.

Randolph put his hands on his hips and squinted down at the survey pit, scanning it for anything relevant for the umpteenth time that hour. The November sun shone mercilessly down, though it was almost seven in the evening, baking the sand and glinting diamond-like on the Nile in the eastern distance. Foolishly, he’d assumed the weather would be something like the Mediterranean, and packed badly; he’d only been to visit Howard in the spring and summer. He’d managed to convince one of the workers to lend him cooler clothes; though they fit his small frame badly, they were nevertheless more comfortable than, heaven forbid, the things he’d brought with him from Boston. 

“About ready to be done for the day, sir?” asked the head workman, standing next to him, staring down into the survey pit— though an entirely different data set presented itself to his engineer’s eyes, surely. Jean-Selin was an invaluable resource; he’d worked with Randolph’s uncle in the Valley of the Kings to the north, when he was training under Flinders Petrie, and had proven indispensable for his knowledge of everything practical, from regional geography to the structural architecture of tombs. Randolph would be lost without him.

“I suppose so,” he sighed, and turned his back on the survey pit. 

A hundred more man-made trenches stretched out around them, daunting in their scope. The noise of workmen packing up for the day filled the hot air as the sun began to sink into the dunes to the west, lighting the landscape a stunning orange-gold. A gentle breeze blew from the direction of the river as Randolph and Jean-Selin returned to the makeshift camp set up to the south of the site.

“How did today go, sir?”

Randolph blew a stray curl out of his face. “Not well.”

“And why is that?” Jean-Selin took a swig from his canteen. “It’s early in the excavation; surely you weren’t expecting to make a grand discovery so soon. Right now is all about plotting the site, figuring out where we _should_ be looking.”

“I know, it’s just—” Randolph stopped, squinted at the setting sun in the distance, then looked down. “My uncle and his patron want to come visit me. Soon. See what progress I’m making.”

“Ah, the famous Howard Carter,” Jean-Selin smirked. 

“And his lackey Lord Carnarvon.”

“Who have been digging in the Valley of the Kings for two years now with nothing to show for it, hm?”

“Is that sarcasm I hear, my dear Jean-Selin?” Randolph asked teasingly.

“Surely not, my good sir.” Jean-Selin reached for his belt, but this time pulled out a flask instead of a canteen. He drank deeply, then offered it to him. Randolph took it, examined it, then lifted it to his lips and took a cautious sip.

“Jesus!” 

“Indeed,” said Jean-Selin wryly, patting a coughing Randolph on the back. “Not used to Luxor liquor, my love?”

“Firstly,” Randolph said raspily, wiping his lips, “I’m nobody’s love, least of all yours.” Jean-Selin grinned a rascal’s grin as he handed the flask back to him. “Secondly, you don’t think my dear uncle won’t take the first opportunity to telegram my father that I’m wasting my time out here alone in the desert?”

“And putting yourself in danger, at the mercy of scoundrels like me?”

Randolph rolled his eyes. “I am serious, Jean-Selin. You know how Howard can be.”

“That I do.” They reached the smattering of tents that constituted the excavation camp, and stood still for a moment, watching the sun make its final descent into the dunes. Randolph was reminded briefly of his time at Amarna with his uncle and Flinders, two hundred miles to the north, where he’d sat on one of the palace terraces and watched the sunset in precisely the same way as the inhabitants of Akhentaten had, all those thousands of years ago. 

Jean-Selin spoke, after a while. “Do you really think Howard will have you sent back to America?”

Randolph sighed. “No. Probably not. At worst he’ll just patronize me, make some jokes at my expense, ask why a promising young gentleman like me is out here in the first place. What I think I’m going to find.”

“You might ask him the same thing.”

Randolph laughed. “Touche. Good night, Jean-Selin.”

“You’re not coming to dinner?” The engineer looked down at his, concerned. 

“I’m exhausted. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“All right. Good night, Randolph Carter.”

+++

Randolph found himself not quite as worn out as he’d thought once he’d retired to his tent, surprisingly enough. As the noise of workmen eating at the communal dinner filtered through the linen walls, he put on some tea, sliced some slightly stale bread he’d brought with him from Luxor, and tried to distract himself from thoughts of his uncle with Amelia Edwards’ _A Thousand Miles Up the Nile_. (He’d read it before, of course— Flinders had made sure of that— but never with actual experience of the sites described.)

Randolph had never known quite how to feel about his uncle. You wouldn’t think it from the way he comported himself— Howard Carter’s nephew, following in his eminent footsteps, even if he did hail from the New England branch of the family. He always made sure to be perfectly effusive about his uncle in public, especially in Egyptological circles. Without his name, he wouldn’t have a doctorate, or an expedition to call his own— due not to lack of skill or discipline, but the fact that he was the son of a Brahmin family with a reputation to uphold, and members of the Boston aristocracy did not send their scions to university to study something as _useless_ as Egyptology.

Howard— he was quite brilliant, Randolph wouldn’t deny him that. And he had always been kind to him. But it was a patronizing, amused, condescending brand of kindness, infuriatingly avuncular, treating his passion as something to be laughed at— genially, gently, but still. A _diversion_. Bookish little Randolph Carter, always busy at some new childish discovery; the boy who read on the playground while his peers screeched and ran about, who hadn’t attended a social event in a non-professional or non-obligatory context in he didn’t know how long. Never a serious scholar, never on a level with his peers. Yes, Howard had convinced his father to let him on the expedition in the first place, to allow him to accept the funding from Miskatonic, but— it had the air of sending a rambunctious young dandy on a Grand Tour, hoping that a year of indulgence would get all the wildness out of his system. Randolph would come home purged of his inconveniently scholarly inclinations; he’d shelve his books, marry a nice young Brahmin lady, and finally, graciously, _settle down_. 

Well, he was sick of it. He dog-eared Amelia’s book and lay down on his back, in his bedroll, fuming. He was sick of Howard, sick of his father, sick of expectations and restrictions. For a wild moment he thought of getting up, getting dressed, going over to Jean-Selin’s tent and convincing him to “abduct” him. (He’d do it, too; Randolph had seen the way the engineer looked at him when he thought Randolph was focused on something else.) Running off to Luxor, or down the river to Cairo, becoming someone completely new. Anonymous, inconspicuous, below eye level in a crowd; he could sequester himself away in the Museum’s library, spend the rest of his days faint in the desert heat, he was more than willing. He thought of getting up and getting dressed, right this instant, and just— just _going_ , walking west into the dunes for as long as his despicably weak little body could carry him. He thought of being mummified where he fell, like a Predynastic priest, becoming part of this place he loved so much he sometimes thought it might kill him. Whatever, however it didn’t matter; he just wanted _out_.

He fell asleep like that, curled into himself, near to weeping with an indefinable want.

+++

It must have been two or three in the morning when he woke up to the singing.

Randolph had been a vivid dreamer for as long as he could remember. His roommates at university had complained of his sleepwalking, sleep-writing in demotic on the walls; he would wake with no memory of that, but with other, correspondent recollections of walking through the torchlit halls of an ancient tomb, trailing his fingers along bas-reliefs of strange gods in the shapes of words he can’t decipher, though he knows he should be able to. And other things of the like. Needless to say, he had kept all of this to himself.

He wondered, as he slid tentatively out of his bedroll, laced his boots, and pulled on his coat over his nightdress, if he might not be dreaming now. But— his dreams had never placed him anywhere he might recognize, anywhere familiar; they’d always been conduits to other places, stranger and more wonderful than the world he knew when he was awake. 

The desert air bit at his skin as he stepped outside, the pleasant breeze from the evening having turned into an unpleasantly steady cold wind. It carried the singing with it from the east, closer to the Nile bank and the dig site. It— sounded Oriental, somehow, minor-key and somehow more ominous than melancholic. There were words, but Randolph couldn’t quite make them out; they seemed to be no language he recognized, though some of the sounds were reminiscent of Egyptian. It grew in volume as he made his way through the dunes, closer to the dig site, and—

Randolph paused atop a dune and squinted, pushing his glasses up from where they’d slipped down on the bridge of his nose. Was that— was that a _light_ , coming from one of the survey pits?

It was, he realized as he approached, picking his way around the outlying perimeter. There was a golden glow illuminating one of the test excavations, near the center of the site. It seemed almost like morning sunlight, though Randolph knew that was impossible. Maybe one of the workmen, come back to retrieve something left behind? But then what about the singing, which seemed to grow louder as he got closer?

“Hello?” he called out tentatively. “Hello, is anybody there?”

There was no response, except for a slight pick-up in the wind, which whipped his nightdress around his legs and made his shiver despite his coat.

It took him a few more minutes to make his way to the pit. When he did, he stopped in his tracks, and stared down in shock.

There were _steps_. Steps, cut into the bedrock below the sand, leading down. The light seemed to come from wherever they led— bright, but gentle, so that Randolph had no trouble looking down without blinding himself. On the walls of the stairwell were some kind of frescoes, not unlike— he shuddered a little— the ones in his dreams. Even as stunned as he was, his training kicked in, and a part of his brain began analyzing style and content: something religious (not out of the ordinary if this was a tomb, which seemed likely), with motifs he recognized (the feather of Ma’at, the death and rebirth of Osiris, several instances of Anubis leading a scared-looking attendant soul) and ones he didn’t (were those— were those _gods_ , those strange, indefinite creatures? And what about that ocean, what was that doing there?). It looked almost Amarnine in style, the figures fluid and dynamic, but there was an element of something else about it that Randolph could not place. Something almost Ramesside, which meant—

Randolph’s heart began to pound. This— this wasn’t just an undiscovered tomb, its wall-paintings brilliantly preserved, this was something _entirely new_. A novel art style, a novel means of construction— a new _mythology_ , even. My God, he thought to himself, and didn’t even think twice before dashing down the steps as fast as he could go without tripping on his nightdress.

Later, he’d think back, and wonder how on Earth he hadn’t noticed that the ostensible tomb was structurally at odds with all the other test pits, with the geography of the region itself; that the singing and the light shouldn’t— not just shouldn’t have been, but shouldn’t have been _possible_. How on Earth had he managed to justify it to himself, dashing down into a glowing tomb in a foreign country to the sound of strange and unearthly music? He hadn’t, was the thing— he’d done as he had a habit of doing, rushing off without thinking of the consequences, letting only the dizzy excitement of discovery lead him.

The light grew in strength as Randolph made it to the bottom of the flight of stairs and began to make his way through the corridor, but the singing faded away abruptly, echoing off the narrow limestone walls. He stared around, wide-eyed, absorbing the alien carvings as he walked cautiously forwards, testing the ground with his feet. In the soft glow, the shadows were fuzzy, indistinct, dreamlike. His footsteps left tracks in the thin layer of sand on the floor, and absently, he thought of how his feet must be the first to tread there in millennia. The notion made him shiver, though the air was close and warm, trapped here for just as long. 

It took perhaps five minutes of walking before he came to the first side chamber. He barely gave it a glance before staying the main course, pushing ever deeper into the complex. The light was— it almost seemed like it was _guiding_ him, drawing him forwards, as though there were something it wanted him to see. There would be time enough for exploration later, he thought, and continued past innumerable other entrances, turning only when the light led him to, barely giving anything he passed a second thought. ( _Hypnotized_ , he would think later. But understandably so.)

Eventually— he couldn’t tell after how long, the minutes had begun to run together and the last time he’d looked at his watch it had been spinning wildly, completely confused— he came to the end of the corridor, where it spread out into an antechamber full of gilded embellishments and concluded in a broad doorway, eight or nine feet high. The entrance was decorated with carvings more intricate and strange than any Randolph had seen so far, and draped with some kind of sheer silk curtain from behind which the light emanated, gentle but insistent. It seemed to pulse, very slightly, as he drew near.

Might as well, Randolph thought, with an uncharacteristic burst of reckless daring. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and pulled the curtain back with a bit more force than was probably necessary.

The light seemed to spread out, almost immediately, casting the whole of the room in a muted white glow Randolph couldn’t find a source for. It glinted off the gilded fixtures on the marble walls, the delicate frescoes adorning every square inch of space, the jewelled furniture, and the dominating object in the room: a gold sarcophagus, ruby-studded and brilliant, that rested face-up on the porphyry floor. 

Randolph stared in shock. He’d never seen anything a tenth so precious, or so beautiful. It was almost enough to send him into a swoon, but he caught himself on the wall, and blinked to clear his head.

“What is this?” he asked aloud, and his voice echoed oddly around the chamber, though it was of no great size. Immediately, he felt foolish for the question. The complex was very clearly a tomb; the real issue was _how_? How in the world could there be a place like this, beneath well-traversed earth scoured by millennia of looters, so intact that the very air was preserved? How was that possible? How had everyone before him _missed it_?

He looked down at the sarcophagus— or looked across, precisely; set on a carefully carved platform, it was nearly at his eye level. The golden lid was carved in the standard stylized features of the New Kingdom, lovely, androgynous, and decidedly serene. Somehow, though, there was something about it that Randolph couldn’t put his finger on— some nebulous strangeness that kept evading him, something that wasn’t quite right. It nagged at him insistently as he climbed the steps to the platform and put both hands on the side of the sarcophagus.

He almost felt bad about it when he shoved the lid off, and heard it hit the floor on the other side of the room with a tremendous crash.

_Oh, I really shouldn’t have done that_ , the small portion of Randolph’s brain that retained any sort of common sense mused. _Howard will have my head for disturbing the remains without proper preparation_.

Randolph winced a little at the thought of his uncle’s imminent rage, but it wasn’t near motivation enough to keep him from bracing himself on the edge of the now-lidless sarcophagus and peering inside. The inner casket was made of stiff dried linen, painted as he’d expected [x]. The features of the deceased were much more evident here than on the outer vessel— still stylized, but recognizable as a specific person. Whoever he was (the size and regality of the chamber and the regalia on the carvings of the dead man led Randolph to infer that this was the tomb of a pharaoh, but he hadn’t yet taken the time to read any of the writing on the walls or on the coffin itself), he’d been beautiful, with lustrous hair braided and beaded in the contemporary fashion and wide kohl-lined eyes that had presumably been brown, though the pigment had faded to a somewhat alarming yellow. It was no great effort to reach down carefully and remove the inner lid from the tomb.

Randolph stared down into the sarcophagus, frozen in shock except for repetitive blinking as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

It was— it was a _person_. A _living_ person, or presumably living; though Randolph didn’t see breathing, the man’s skin was rosy in a way that the dead just _weren’t_ , crook and flail held loosely across his bare chest in hands that clearly hadn’t even begun to stiffen up. Randolph had braced himself for the sight of remains in a wide variety of states, but— the predominant thought in his mind was _what_? _What_? He couldn’t even begin to think of an explanation. He couldn’t even begin to think—

He only stood there dumbfounded for half a moment before the body— the _person_ in the sarcophagus blinked his eyes open, looked up at Randolph, and raised an eyebrow. “Hello.”

That was a bit too much. Randolph shrieked at a pitch that under other circumstances would have embarrassed him, stumbled backwards and off the platform, and landed on his back on the marble floor, his head slamming into the ground with a nasty crack. He struggled to stay conscious, staring up at the oddly geometric ceiling. The quality of the light, he noticed, seemed to have changed— deeper and darker, less white and more gold.

He heard the rustling of fabric as the figure in the sarcophagus sat up, saw him stretch in his peripheral vision. Randolph squeezed his eyes shut.

“Are you quite all right?” asked the man, as nonchalantly as if Randolph had knocked up against an ill-placed wall. “I apologize if I scared you.”

“You—” Randolph struggled to put words together, though whether that was from the shock or the head trauma he wasn’t sure. “You— _how_?”

Randolph heard the figure stand up, as easily as if he’d just lain down for a catnap, and step lightly off the platform. “Foolishness, on my part. I was beginning to think I’d _never_ get out of there.” He came into Randolph’s field of view, cloaked in an opalescent robe and leaning over him with an expression partly of concern and partly of curiosity, as though he’d never seen anything quite like him. Randolph shrank involuntarily away, pressing himself into the floor. “Thank you, by the way. I feel a terrible host, scaring you like that when you’ve done me such a service.”

Randolph furrowed his brow, struggling to put two and two together. “Service?”

The man sighed, as though Randolph wasn’t getting something obvious. “You freed me from my captivity when you opened the sarcophagus. Didn’t you read any of the inscriptions?”

Randolph’s stomach sank. “No, I—”

“Oh, never mind. It matters little. The point is—” he knelt gracefully at Randolph’s side— “that you’ve done me a great favor, and I am thankful.”

“I didn’t mean to— who _are_ you?”

He seemed to think about that for a bit. “If I were to put it into a range your ear can hear, I suppose my name would render as something like—” and here he made a series of sounds so utterly alien Randolph couldn’t even begin to parse them, noises a human throat shouldn’t even be able to produce, at one grating and lyrical. “But the name I go by in this avatar is Nyarlathotep.”

“Nyarlathotep.” _That’s nonsense Egyptian_ , said a small voice in the back of Randolph’s mind, but he decided to ignore it. “You’re not— you’re not a real pharaoh.”

“No,” said Nyarlathotep encouragingly. “No, I’m not.”

Randolph wasn’t sure how he knew, then, but he did. “You’re a god.”

“Precisely,” said Nyarlathotep, with the air of a teacher who had just guided a student to the correct answer. “Would you like me to help you up?”

Head spinning, still a little dazed from his fall, Randolph nodded. With a motion a tad too quick to be entirely human, Nyarlathotep reached behind him, grabbed him by the back of his neck, and lifted him upright as if he weighed nothing at all.

There was— even later, Randolph couldn’t find the words to describe it. The closest he could ever come was to say that as soon as Nyarlathotep touched him there was a rushing, like falling through empty air, and it suddenly felt as though— as though he were being laid out on a table and _dissected_ , body and mind picked apart and turned inside out and examined with an impossible thoroughness. It was quite possibly the most acutely painful thing Randolph had ever experienced, though it only lasted for a fragment of a second.

Randolph came back to himself to the sound of screaming, high-pitched and piteous. It took him a few moments to connect the noise with the sensation in his throat, and recognize that the screaming was his. Nyarlathotep’s hand was still tight on the back of his neck; instinctively Randolph tried to struggle free, to no avail.

“Sorry about that,” he heard from somewhere above him, nonchalant as anything. “It’s been a while since I did anything with humans. I’m usually more delicate.”

“What—” gasped Randolph. Dimly, he realized that he could taste copper; he reached up to touch his nose, and his fingers came away a dizzy crimson. The sight of blood made him reel, knees weakening involuntarily beneath him.

“Just establishing a few basic facts about you. First contact can be a bit painful, but I didn’t realize you’d be so sensitive. My bad.”

Even scared out of his mind, the memory of such violent, invasive agony lingering in him like something physical, Randolph still bristled. “I’m not _sensitive_.”

“You rather are.”

“I am _n—_ ” Nyarlathotep tightened his grip around the back of Randolph’s neck, digging his nails into his throat— “oh!”

“See? Sensitive.” Nyarlathotep released him, and Randolph rubbed at the tenderness of nascent bruises, glaring sullenly up at Nyarlathotep— who just smiled down at him with something almost like indulgence. “But that’s all right, Randolph Carter. You have quite a lot to make up for it.”

Randolph swallowed, averted his eyes. His throat still ached, and a dim electric buzzing had settled into the skin along where Nyarlathotep’s hand had been, so faint as to be almost imperceptible. “What do you want with me?”

“Weren’t you listening? You’ve done me a great service. I was hoping you’d allow me to show my gratitude.” Nyarlathotep reached out again, took Randolph’s chin between forefinger and thumb and tilted his face up, studying him intently. “Oh, you’re bleeding. Did I cause that?”

Randolph stared up at him, not daring to speak. There was something profoundly _wrong_ about the way Nyarlathotep’s hand felt on his chin— inexplicable, unquantifiable, but there. He couldn’t pinpoint precisely what it was, but it made his skin crawl, to such an extent that the instinct to jerk out of his grip and _run_ was only countered by the barely-rational thought that there was nowhere to run to, and even if there were, it wouldn’t matter. He’d gone and attracted the attention of something— something _else_ , and now it was standing above him, looking down at him with its hand on his chin and an expression of insatiable _curiosity_ on its face. Randolph felt suddenly very akin to a butterfly with a pin through its stomach, transfixed by a collector’s fascination, fragile wings beating futilely against the cork.

“I suppose I did. I do apologize.” Nyarlathotep wiped the blood from Randolph’s nose with the thumb of his other hand, and Randolph realized quite suddenly that he was shaking. “I try to mitigate it as best I can, but taking an avatar requires such... _concentration_ , and even at the best of times it can be overwhelming.” He didn’t let go of Randolph’s face, instead shifting his hand so that he was cupping Randolph’s jaw, fingers brushing lightly over his pulse, the soft unprotected spot beneath his ear. Randolph fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut.

“Why are you here?” There was a damnable tremble in his voice, still stuck in the faint upper register it occupied when he was angry, or upset, or scared. He sounded completely pathetic, but it was better than terrified silence. “I mean— if you’re a god, how did you end up stuck in a tomb underground?”

Nyarlathotep gave him a small, wry smile, and somehow that was _worse_. “Foolishness on my part, I suppose. I angered a fair number of— _people—_ I shouldn’t have, and they conspired to land me here. I’d always displayed a fascination with humans and your civilization, this one—” he gestured around at the frescoed walls, the empty golden sarcophagus— “in particular. I think they considered it poetic justice. The Italians have a word for it, _contrapasso_ , if I recall correctly. Really just a cruel prank, I’ve only been here a few millennia, but still. Rather annoying, to have to wait for such a creature as you to come along and release me. No offense, you’re _terribly_ adorable, but you’re still human, and depending on any of your kind is a touch humiliating. Speaking of, what year is it?”

“19— 1924.” _Or it was when I came down here_ , Randolph thought to himself. 

Nyarlathotep frowned. “Hm. Not my favorite century.”

“I’m...sorry?”

“No, no, don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” He sighed, resigned for a moment, and then shifted a little. Randolph couldn’t quite put a name to it, but something about him seemed to _change_ , some essential aspect, and suddenly he looked less like— less like a person and more like a god, taller and brighter and _more_ , more in every sense. Between one moment and the next, his eyes changed from the same alarming yellow-gold painted on the inner sarcophagus to a pure velvety black, so intense that Randolph felt somehow that he shouldn’t look at it for too long. The hand on Randolph’s face grew uncomfortably warm, until it felt as though it might burn him if Nyarlathotep pressed even the slightest bit harder.

“What are you doing?” Randolph couldn’t hide the panic in his voice, and Nyarlathotep looked down at him with something slightly less kind than pity.

“Just adjusting.” Nyarlathotep rolled his shoulders, and though there was nothing ostensibly inhuman about the gesture, it made Randolph shudder. “I’ve been stuck in such a dampened form for so long, it feels wonderful to stretch a little. You can tell me if it’s too much.”

“No, I— it’s fine.” Dizzying and overwhelming and a good deal less than _fine_ , actually, but then so was this whole...situation, and Randolph wasn’t about to tell a god no.

“Good.” Nyarlathotep dropped his hand from Randolph’s face and stepped back a little, regarding him with a gaze that reminded Randolph of nothing so much as the way he’d seen curators back home size up a piece of art at auction. He fought the urge to shrink away. “Now, what is it that you would like?”

“What— what do you mean, what I would like?”

Nyarlathotep sighed. “I know you’re human, but I really am trying to meet you on your level. I would appreciate a little effort on your end. You released me. I’m grateful. I’d like to repay you, however you’d like. I’m not bound to, of course, but it seems...polite.”

“Polite— that was an _accident_.” Randolph still couldn’t get past the way Nyarlathotep was looking at him, _staring_ at him, as though he were one part _objet d’art_ and one part experimental subject. It was making rational thought profoundly difficult. “I didn’t mean to let you free, I didn’t know what I was doing—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nyarlathotep’s tone was beginning to get testy, and Randolph quailed beneath his gaze. “I’m still grateful, but you’re beginning to test the limits of my charity, little human. Tell me what you want.”

“I— I’d love it if you let me go alive,” stuttered Randolph, and immediately felt his heart drop into his stomach. _That sounded like sarcasm, he’ll read it as sarcasm, he’s going to tear you to pieces for that—_

In the blink of an eye, Nyarlathotep disappeared. For one blessed moment Randolph thought he’d heeded the request and gone off to do...whatever it was that gods did when they’d been stuck underground for three thousand years. He began to relax, his knees going weak with relief— and then he felt a hand, heavy with gold and ruby jewelry, close around his neck.

“I’m sure you would,” Randolph heard in his ear. “Unfortunately, I know better.”

There wasn’t really much pressure on Randolph’s neck, just enough to constitute an elegant threat of force. Light enough for him to speak, at any rate, even if his voice was so breathy from fear that it was barely audible. “What do you mean?” 

It came out as something mortifyingly close to a squeak, and Randolph cringed, but Nyarlathotep just laughed from somewhere above him. It— wasn’t a cruel laugh, but it wasn’t exactly kind, either. “Please. I know you, Randolph Carter, and I know that’s not what you want.”

Even terrified to the point of paralysis, Randolph could apparently still register indignation. “You’ve only just met me. You have no _idea_ who I am.”

“No?” The amusement in Nyarlathotep’s voice was thick enough to cut with a knife, barely suppressed delight evident in every word. With the same suddenness as earlier, a mirror appeared propped against the wall across from them— taller than Randolph, framed in ruby-studded gold, perfectly polished. In it, Randolph saw the two of them: himself, shabby-looking in his boots and coat and nightgown in front of Nyarlathotep, who was practically glowing with a regal and uncanny light, holding Randolph by the neck and leaning down close over his shoulder so that Randolph could feel his breath. The top of Randolph’s head came, generously, up to Nyarlathotep’s collarbone, and Randolph was suddenly intensely aware of how very little effort it would take for Nyarlathotep to crush his windpipe, tear out his throat, snap his spine. 

As soon as the thought had crossed his mind, he felt something shift against his back, and Nyarlathotep wrapped his other arm around Randolph’s waist. It was a light touch, almost gentle, but Randolph didn’t dare try and resist it— not then, and not when Nyarlathotep pulled him in close, with the kind of firm insistence you might use for a wayward pet. Randolph shuddered, and in the mirror he saw Nyarlathotep smile.

“Look at you,” Nyarlathotep murmured. Randolph could feel his voice, thrumming unsettlingly through his body from the point where his head rested against Nyarlathotep’s chest. “So scared. What on Earth are you afraid of?”

“Is that a joke?” Even with the plausible deniability of the pressure on his neck, the pitch of Randolph’s voice made his face grow hot. 

“Not at all.” Keeping eye contact in the mirror, Nyarlathotep leaned down and pressed his lips to the top of Randolph’s head, and this time Randolph did close his eyes. The delicate scrape of teeth against his scalp was almost enough to make him scream, never mind what he might see in the mirror. “Are you afraid to tell me what you want? There’s no reason to be. I saw it all when I read your mind earlier.”

“When you—”

“Mm-hm.” Nyarlathotep hadn’t taken his mouth from the top of Randolph’s head, and he could feel the words murmured into his hair, which was beginning to stand on end from something that felt like static electricity. Or sheer terror. That was also a possibility. “Didn’t you feel it?”

He had, and Nyarlathotep had only confirmed a sneaking suspicion Randolph had had since the event. He couldn’t imagine a purpose for something that invasive that _wasn’t_ to know every part of him, to pick him apart down to the atom to find out how he worked. Inside and out. If he thought about it he could— could feel it now, somehow, infinitesimal fissures where there was supposed to be only smooth matter. Invisible autopsy scars.

“Smart human.” Nyarlathotep had moved on from the top of Randolph’s head and now had his mouth somewhere around Randolph’s left ear, near where his hair thinned out to fineness and then to nothing. Randolph shut his eyes tighter. “I know everything about you, you know.”

“Such as?” 

Nyarlathotep’s lips brushed over his ear, and Randolph felt an involuntary shiver run down his spine. “Open your eyes, hm?”

Randolph did, and in the mirror before them was no longer their reflection, but another scene entirely, as though it were a moving painting. The edges were a bit blurred, but in it he saw himself, sat at a library carrel, bent over a massive yellow-edged leather volume. His surroundings looked precisely like his favorite corner of the Miskatonic library as an undergraduate, and Randolph realized with a start that he _remembered_ this, this moment in particular: he’d been studying for a translation exam, fretting about the late hour at which he’d started. Seeing himself from the outside was profoundly strange. “How—”

“Never mind that.” The scene in the mirror changed— now it was Randolph at age twelve or so, reading Herodotus in his attic bedroom— now at sixteen, on a ship across the Atlantic for the first time, standing on the prow of a steamer at night and gazing out at the starry sky, dwarfed by the immensity of the horizon— now at twenty, losing himself completely in the back alleys of Cairo— now that morning, waist-deep in a survey pit, sifting through material with Jean-Selin squinting down above him. They flashed by almost quicker than Randolph could recognize them, dizzying and disorienting. He found himself leaning on Nyarlathotep’s arm around his waist so as not to lose his balance.

“If you—” Randolph struggled to string the words together, dazed by the images and still absently terrified, somewhere in the emotional background— “if you know all this, my thoughts and my memories and everything about me, why do you need me to tell you anything?”

“I suppose I don’t,” said Nyarlathotep. “Though I was given to understand that humans valued being asked their opinions on the things one does to them.”

“Not if those opinions are going to be disregarded entirely,” said Randolph, trying to repress a shudder. 

“I see.”

_You don’t_ , thought Randolph. “Then why don’t you tell me what I want?”

Nyarlathotep was silent, and for a moment Randolph went faint with fear, afraid he’d pushed too hard. It was hardly assuaged when Nyarlathotep let go of his waist and neck and spun him around by the shoulders with a startling quickness, leaving him breathless and staring up with wide eyes and a racing heart.

“Let’s see,” said Nyarlathotep, setting his hands on Randolph’s hips and somehow managing to convey such obvious condescension in the touch and the words, the particular angle of his gaze down at Randolph, that Randolph bit down on his bottom lip to stop himself saying anything he might regret. “First of all, you want this expedition to pan out. You want to find something extraordinary, something revolutionary to the field. You don’t want to be famous, per se, but you want to advance knowledge, push the light of human civilization a little further into the dark. Very grand, very idealistic. Really, it shocks me that you couch it in those terms even to yourself. What do you do when the dark is infinite, I would ask?”

Randolph opened his mouth to respond, and Nyarlathotep placed a finger over his lips. “Ah, ah. I wasn’t done. You want that, but there’s something...more, that you want, too.” The finger on Randolph’s lips trailed down, past his chin— the soft skin on the underside of his jaw— throat— collarbone— chest, pulling down the fabric of his nightgown to expose the skin above his heart. Randolph swallowed. “Remember what I showed you in the mirror?” (Randolph nodded.) “Think about how you felt then. Like your heart was too big for your chest, hm? Like you were full of light, like you might die at the sight of the open sky.”

Nyarlathotep slid his other hand around to the small of Randolph’s back and pulled him in close, and Randolph was too overwhelmed— hypnotized, really— to even think about resisting, tilting his head back to keep Nyarlathotep’s steady gaze. There was a strange kind of softness in his eyes. “Poor little human. You’ve wanted out for so long, it must have been torture. Stuck on this humdrum planet, with these humdrum people, searching out scraps of wonder to sustain you while you wondered what the point was. Not many of your kind are cursed with a heart like yours, but those few who are live like songbirds in cages. Sick with longing.” He leaned down, so close that Randolph could taste the sweet burn of his breath. “I can show you things you couldn’t even _dream_ of.”

Nyarlathotep’s voice had grown soft near the end, almost lyrical, and Randolph couldn’t stop looking at his _eyes_ — tiny mirrors into space, black speckled with intermittent stars. Pupils with light swirling hypnotically around them, like the event horizons of black holes.

It wasn’t a terrible surprise when Nyarlathotep cupped Randolph’s face in his hand, closed the gap between them, and kissed Randolph on the mouth.

It...had been a while, since Randolph had last kissed anybody (or been kissed, to be perfectly accurate), and he had never been terribly good at it, but Nyarlathotep pulled his jaw down with a gentle thumb and opened him up as easily as if this were the thousandth time between them. There was a familiarity there that Randolph couldn’t even begin to explain. Maybe that moment of shattering contact had extended to the topography of his body— it had certainly _felt_ that way, at any rate.

After— an indeterminate time, Randolph was in no state to be sure— Nyarlathotep pulled away, just a little, keeping his hand on the side of Randolph’s face. Randolph tried a few times to speak, but the small smile on Nyarlathotep’s face kept stymieing his attempts, making him trail off into incoherence.

“What was that, darling?”

“I said—” Randolph cleared his throat, squared his shoulders in an attempt at restoring some sense of himself, though he was still held quite close to Nyarlathotep— “am I to understand that you want to take me with you?”

“I think that would be correct, yes.” The hand on Randolph’s face moved nearer to the side of his neck, began to play gently with the loose curls of hair there. “You’re such a lovely little songbird, I can’t bear the idea of you in a cage. It suits both of our interests for you to come with me.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

“Wouldn’t that be a burden to you?”

“Goodness, no.” With the same abruptness as before, Nyarlathotep spun him around so that he was facing the mirror again, keeping a gentle but proprietary hand on his hip. Their reflections were back, the mirror seemed normal, but there was something...imperceptibly off about Randolph’s in particular. Something had changed, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what, like a spot-the-difference game where the detail in question was impossibly, infinitesimally small.

“Why not? Wouldn’t keeping me around be...distracting?”

Nyarlathotep’s hand tightened around Randolph’s hip, and he felt his heart pick up, the dizzy rush of fear whiting out his vision for a moment. “Don’t flatter yourself. You are...amusing, though,” he murmured, dipping his head near to Randolph’s ear, “and what I said about wanting to pay you back is true. And— three thousand years trapped in a dusty old tomb in the dark, I’ve been _very_ bored. You’re the first interesting thing to cross my path for a long time.”

Randolph shuddered a little. “And if I say no?”

Nyarlathotep’s teeth glinted in that strange golden light, pearly and sharp. “What do you mean?”

“If I—” Randolph swallowed— “tell you I’d rather not go with you? I’d rather stay here, on my expedition, here on Earth? Would you leave me alone?”

Nyarlathotep brushed his teeth along the exposed part of Randolph’s neck, for just a fraction of a moment, and Randolph fought the urge to jerk away. “You won’t. I know how badly you want.”

“But if I didn’t.”

“Why does it matter?”

Randolph sighed. “It doesn’t, I suppose.”

“That’s what I thought.” Nyarlathotep removed his hand from Randolph’s hip and flicked his wrist elegantly, and the mirror’s surface clouded over with darkness. As Randolph watched, fascinated, it resolved from inky and indistinct obscurity to the crystalline emptiness of outer space, the same deep black as Nyarlathotep’s eyes. Stars, tiny point of light, shone in the unimaginable distance. 

“Where is that?” he asked.

“Somewhere far from here.” Nyarlathotep stepped out from behind him and took Randolph’s hands in his own. “A doorway, if you will, to what you’ve longed for all your life.”

“There’s no need to be that dramatic about it.”

“I rather think there is.”

Randolph closed his eyes, tried to still his racing heart. He felt even fainter than before, dissociative, like this couldn’t possibly be happening. His fear was still there, a steady thrum in the background that kept him ever so slightly off balance, but at some point it had been eclipsed by the sheer unreality of the situation. This was insane. This was a dream. This was a nightmare, or it was the best gift sleep had ever given him; he still wasn’t sure. Either way, though, the choice didn’t belong to him— or it had, at some point, but it had stopped belonging to him the moment he had first gazed at the stars outside his attic window and wondered what lay past them.

He opened his eyes and looked out through the mirror, at the endless sky beyond.

“Would you like to come with me, Randolph Carter?”

Randolph nodded, took one final breath of that still and ancient air, and let Nyarlathotep lead him through the mirror.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a classicist by trade, but i have a moderate interest in egyptology and it overlaps with my degree to a slight extent. that said, i don't, like, know how tombs work. all the archaeological history mentioned herein is otherwise true, except for the fact that the royal palace at akhentaten (modern amarna) is no longer standing, and there was no "new england branch" of howard carter's family, they were all british. (actually, carter is the surname of a notable family of the colonial _virginia_ aristocracy. way to go, howard.)
> 
> the term "brahmin" refers to the boston brahmins, a turn of phrase coined by noted bostonian oliver wendell holmes to refer to the upper-crust families that lived in beacon hill, which is an old aristocratic neighborhood downtown. 
> 
> the title is from john a. wilson's translation of the hymn to the aten (sun disc), a religious text dating from the reign of and supposedly composed by pharaoh akhenaten.
> 
> please come yell at me for being a parody of myself on twitter [@morporkias](http://twitter.com/morporkias).


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